To start with there is the small matter of the name. Some believe Exchange Server 2012 will be the name, while others think that Exchange Server 2013 is more likely. Given that some training companies have started creating their landing pages for Exchange 2013 training there is probably a little more weight on that side (do you think they may have some insider info?).

The Exchange 15 features I describe below should be considered speculation only, as they are all based on either:

• Leaks published by others
• Surveys from Microsoft
• General observations

Outlook Web App Offline Mode

Of the few leaked bits of information is this one reported by Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet, that OWA in Exchange 15 will have an “offline mode” thanks to the capabilities of HTML5.

Exchange MVP and Windows IT Pro columnist Tony Redmond wrote his own thoughts on this feature here.

Team Mailboxes

Another part of Mary Jo’s article referred to a focus on collaboration not communication, with “team mailboxes” that integrate with SharePoint as a new feature.

Although we currently have the ability to share mailboxes in Exchange between multiple people they don’t provide any special functionality. What sort of improvements could Exchange deliver for teams?

Perhaps the SharePoint integration is the key in this. A mailbox that integrates smoothly with SharePoint workflows might be useful. Another possibility is that this will be the stepping stone that customers need to move them away from public folders for team workflows and into SharePoint, a move that Microsoft has been gently encouraging for several years.

Public Folders

Speaking of public folders, it seems they may still exist in Exchange 15, as they are included in a survey from Microsoft that I (and I assume many others) received for the Exchange 15 exam design.

Public folders may have a new twist though, with the exam survey referencing a skill of “Migrate to modern public folders”.

Depending on how you interpret that it could mean that public folders have undergone some improvements (which seems unlikely from what I heard about public folder development attention at Microsoft) or it may refer to a new platform for public folders (such as the team mailbox integration with SharePoint).

Or it could mean nothing at all.

Client Access Front End

The survey also mentions the “Exchange 15 CAS/CAFE”.

CAFE is presumably an acronym for Client Access Front End, which harks back to the Exchange 2003 “Front End server”, but in the context of today’s products, may have some similarities to Lync’s “Front End” server role.

I suspect that the CAFE is a way to formalise the use of CAS arrays, which initially were not promoted as a best practice for all Exchange 2010 deployments (even those without a CAS HA requirement) and only seemed to emerge as one sometime after the SP1 release date (and was recently reinforced here).

I could see CAFE configuration surfacing in the Exchange GUI management tools, or during Client Access server setup, and may include a capability to maintain a consistent configuration (e.g. external URLs and authentication settings on virtual directories) across multiple Client Access servers.

Office 365

There is no doubt that the cloud (and Office 365) is going to be a big part of messaging in the near future. The recent announcement of new cloud certifications from Microsoft is a strong indicator of that, even if you still think the cloud is over-hyped.

Hybrid scenarios are mentioned in the Exchange 15 exam survey so it would appear that Exchange 15 admins will be expected to understand both on-premise and cloud integration scenarios.

There is also the general trend in activity by Exchange Server MVPs. The information that the MVPs have access to is under strict NDA (by the way, I’m not an MVP so none of what I am writing here breaks an NDA) quite a few of them have been pursuing Office 365 certifications recently.

Of course that may simply be the tendency of MVPs to seek certification in the very latest things, or that many MVPs happen to work for companies that keep up with the latest technology.

Data Loss Prevention

The exam survey mentions Data Loss Prevention (DLP) as a feature of Exchange 15. It seems that Exchange 15 may ship with pre-build DLP rules as well as having the ability to configure custom rules and policies.

Exchange Administration Center

There are several mentions of the Exchange Administration Center (EAC). I suspect that this is the evolution of the Exchange Control Panel and may extend into allowing more Exchange administrative tasks to be performed through a web-based administration panel, instead of only having the choice of the slow GUI console or the learning curve of PowerShell.

Interestingly Microsoft asked customers if they would be interested in something similar to this back in 2009.

Other Expectations

Here are a few other brief items.

• Database Availability Groups will remain as the model for mailbox server high availability. The Exchange 15 exam survey doesn’t hint at any significant changes to these.
• Address Book Policies, introduced with Exchange 2010 SP2, are also included in Exchange 15
• Ability to configure Kerberos authentication for CAS is mentioned in the exam survey, suggesting that hardware load-balancing will continue to be a part of Exchange HA
• Workload Management Policies are briefly mentioned and may be an evolution of the client throttling polices in Exchange 2010

As I said this is all my own observations and speculations, not based on any insider information. However if even a few of these turn out to be true it does make me feel excited about getting my hands on Exchange 15 when it reaches public beta.

Related posts:

• I’m on the Coalface Tech Podcast

This article Observations: What to Expect from Exchange 15 is © 2012 ExchangeServerPro.com

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Exchange ActiveSync is a feature of Exchange Server 2010 that is installed by default when you install the Client Access server role.

This is one of the greatest strengths of Exchange ActiveSync; that it is a built-in feature of Exchange that does not require additional licenses, servers, or software products to be installed in your network or on the end user devices.

This is very attractive for smaller organizations who want the convenience of mobile email access for their staff without having to incur significant additional costs.

With Exchange ActiveSync businesses get the benefits of:

• Secure mobile access to email, calendar, contacts and tasks
• Support for a wide range of consumer smart phones and devices, keeping costs down by allowing users to utilize their own personal mobile devices
• Policy-based control over devices and data, including features such as remote wipe

Here are some more details about the features of ActiveSync in Exchange Server 2010.

Direct Push

Direct Push is an attractive feature for mobile users because it allows a device to be updated instantly when new content is ready to be synchronized.

Although the name “Direct Push” suggests that the server initiates a connection when new content is available, it is the mobile device itself that makes the initial HTTPS request but with a long timeout period of 15 minutes.

Exchange 2010 ActiveSync Direct Push

If the mailbox receives a new item the server responds to the HTTPS request. If the 15 minute timeout lapses the device simply opens a new HTTPS request and the process repeats.

AutoDiscover

Similar to the way AutoDiscover allows an Outlook profile to be automatically configured for a new mailbox user, it also simplifies the configuration of a new mobile device for connectivity to a user’s mailbox.

This helps reduce administrative effort and costs by allowing a user to set up their mobile device to receive email simply by entering their email address and password.

ActiveSync Mailbox Policies

Exchange ActiveSync mailbox policies allow administrators to configure the same features and security settings to apply to each group of users.

Exchange 2010 ActiveSync Policies

This includes settings such as whether email attachments can be downloaded to devices, whether devices require a password to unlock them, and how many days’ worth of mailbox content to keep synchronized on the device.

Related posts:

• Publishing Different Geographic ActiveSync URLs using AutoDiscover
• How to Run Virtual Android Devices for Exchange ActiveSync Training
• Coming Soon: The Exchange Server 2010 ActiveSync Guide
• Windows 8 Mail Client and Exchange ActiveSync Policies
• How to Test ActiveSync without a Mobile Phone

This article Introduction to Exchange Server 2010 ActiveSync is © 2012 ExchangeServerPro.com

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A: In short, yes.

I’ve been asked whether there is a way to script or automate the failover (or more accurately, switchover) of the mailbox databases in an Exchange 2010 Database Availability Group.

The goal is to always return mailbox databases to their preferred node within the DAG after business hours, when something during the day has caused them to failover to different nodes.

Why would you want to do this? There could be several reasons:

• to balance out the performance of each server by ensuring no one server is handling more databases than others
• to return databases to the most well-connected locations relevant to the user population
• to return databases to the correct DAG nodes for backups to run successfully and in a supported manner

So in order to do this you can use the RedistributeActiveDatabases.ps1 script provided by Microsoft in Exchange 2010 SP1 (and later) to rebalance databases in a DAG. See a demonstration of that script here. All you would need to do is run that script as a scheduled task using an account with the required Exchange administrative privileges.

However, if you have that script running every night as a scheduled task you face the possible situation where rebalancing the DAG is not a desirable outcome.

Consider that databases in a DAG may failover due to server hardware failure, such as a disk or memory within a server. Even though the server is up again, doesn’t necessarily mean that the memory fault is resolved, or that the disk isn’t running in a degraded state.

So how do you prevent an unhealthy server from hosting active mailbox databases if the rebalancing of the DAG is automated?

The solution is to block activation on the unhealthy server. There are two ways you can do this.

The first method is to use Set-MailboxServer with the -DatabasecopyAutoActivationPolicy parameter. For example here is  server with an unrestricted activation policy, so it is capable of activating passive databases.

[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxServer HO-EX2010-MB2 | ft name,databasecopy* -auto

Name          DatabaseCopyAutoActivationPolicy
----          --------------------------------
HO-EX2010-MB2                     Unrestricted

By setting the activation policy to “Blocked” the server will not activate any databases when the DAG is rebalanced.

[PS] C:\>Set-MailboxServer ho-ex2010-mb2 -DatabaseCopyAutoActivationPolicy Blocked

The second method is actually the same underlying technique, but adds a few more steps that are worth performing. If a server is unhealthy then it probably shouldn’t be hosting any active databases, so you also want to move any other active databases off the server as well.

You can achieve this by running the StartDagServerMaintenance.ps1, the same script used to manage installation of updates on DAG members.

[PS] C:\>cd $exscripts
[PS] C:\...>.\StartDagServerMaintenance.ps1 ho-ex2010-mb2

Either of those methods will prevent the DAG member from hosting active databases until you’ve had a chance to resolve the server health issue.

Related posts:

• How to Rebalance Mailbox Databases in a DAG with Exchange Server 2010 SP1
• Managing the Replication Source for Exchange Server 2010 Mailbox Database Reseed
• Dealing with Exchange Server Update Rollups and Forefront Protection for Exchange
• PowerShell Script to Generate Email Traffic in a Test Lab Environment
• How to Configure a File Share Witness for an Exchange 2010 Database Availability Group

This article Exchange 2010 FAQ: Can You Automate Rebalancing a Database Availability Group? is © 2012 ExchangeServerPro.com

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During the Technical Preview Microsoft works with a selection of customers under strict non-disclosure to test their products in real world situations so that the final product releases can be improved.

According to the announcement by PJ Hough, CVP of Development, Microsoft Office Division:

With Office 15, for the first time ever, we will simultaneously update our cloud services, servers, and mobile and PC clients for Office, Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, Project, and Visio.

With the Technical Preview program underway Hough lets us know that:

…everyone will have the opportunity to try the Office 15 public beta later this summer.

Assuming Microsoft is able to release a beta of Exchange 15 by August this year, what does that mean for for a possible RTM in 2012?

Brian Winstead put forward his theory in his Windows IT Pro column back in October 2011:

If the Exchange team follows the pattern of previous releases, I’d expect them to release a public beta for Exchange 15 by mid-year 2012, perhaps as early as April or May, and if all goes well, the final version would be out by the end of next year. As for the final name, for the past couple of releases, they’ve looked forward and applied the year after the actual release year. So, Exchange Server 2007 was released at the end of 2006, and Exchange Server 2010 came at the end of 2009. My suspicion is they would avoid the bad luck omen of taking that route if they release in 2012 and might just stick with Exchange Server 2012.

I tend to agree that it is unlikely we’ll see a “2013″ naming for the next generation of Office products.

Exchange Server 2010 was released as a public beta in April 2009, and reached RTM slightly less than 6 months later. So a “summer” beta release of “Exchange 15″ followed by some hard work by Microsoft could see an “Exchange 2012″ RTM perhaps around late November.

Read Microsoft’s “Office 15″ announcement here:

• “Office 15″ Begins Technical Preview

Related posts:

• Popular posts:

This article Exchange Server 2012? is © 2012 ExchangeServerPro.com

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Answer: Yes, you can.

Often people ask me whether wildcard SSL certificates can be used with Exchange Server 2010, because they have heard that they are either unsupported, not secure, or just not recommended.

What is a wildcard SSL certificate? From Microsoft TechNet:

A wildcard certificate is designed to support a domain and multiple subdomains. For example, configuring a wildcard certificate for *.contoso.com results in a certificate that will work for mail.contoso.com, web.contoso.com, and autodiscover.contoso.com.

The attractiveness of wildcard SSL certificates is that they are usually cheaper than other types of certificates, and they make some Exchange Server configurations easier to manage.

Support for Exchange 2010 and Wildcard SSL Certificates

The support question is a relatively easy one to answer. Yes they are supported from a vendor perspective. One clue for this is that wildcard SSL certificates are an option in the Exchange 2010 new certificate wizard. Microsoft does not make a habit of including options in Exchange Server that will lead you down an unsupported path.

However they are not supported for all scenarios. For example:

• wildcard certificates can’t be used in conjunction with OCS 2007 (eg for secure communications for UM/OWA integration)
• wildcard certificates are not supported for older mobile devices such as Windows Mobile 5.0

Security Implications for Exchange 2010 and Wildcard SSL Certificates

The security question is also relatively easy to answer. The common assumption is that wildcard SSL certificates are less secure than other SSL certificates.

Microsoft’s own documentation even references “security implications”.

…many customers are uncomfortable with the security implications of maintaining a certificate that can be used for any sub-domain. A more secure alternative is to list each of the required domains as SANs in the certificate. By default, this approach is used when certificate requests are generated by Exchange.

Verisign/Symantec describes some of those implications here:

• Security: If one server or sub-domain is compromised, all sub-domains may be compromised.
• Management: If the wildcard certificate needs to be revoked, all sub-domains will need a new certificate.

However, put those concerns in the context of your Exchange organization. If you’re using a wildcard SSL certificate to secure a single, internet-facing Client Access server then the above issues do not create much concern.

On the other hand if you’re deploying a large, global Exchange organization with multiple geographic entry points for various services, or those services spread over many services, then those issues are of greater concern.

Summary

So in conclusion, yes Exchange 2010 supports wildcard SSL certificates and no they are not necessarily less secure than other certificates.

However, do your due diligence and make sure that the specific support and security scenarios that do exist will not adversely impact your own Exchange 2010 deployment.

Related posts:

• Exchange SSL Certificate Management Survey
• Exchange Server 2010 POP3: Securing POP3 Client Remote Access
• Autodiscover and SSL Warnings during Exchange 2010 Migration
• Exchange 2010 SSL Certificates
• SSL Certificate Trust Errors for New Thawte Certificates

This article Exchange 2010 FAQ: Are Wildcard SSL Certificates Supported? is © 2011 ExchangeServerPro.com

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So, first things first…

Should Database Defragmentation be Regular Maintenance?

For the answer to that question I’m going to refer to the most authoritative source on Exchange Server – Scott Schnoll, Principal Technical Writer at Microsoft.

What was I doing when he tweeted that to me? I was defragging some mailbox databases

But was I doing that as part of regular maintenance? No I wasn’t, and neither should you  In my case I was defragging some databases in a site where we have more than 200 mailbox databases. If I defragged 3-4 of those per week each database would still only get defragged once a year.

Of course I’d prefer that I never had to defrag them at all. For one thing it means working on a Friday night. Regular defrags would also probably suggest we’re not managing our capacity properly.  But there are other reasons not to as well.

Reasons Not to Defrag Mailbox Databases

So why shouldn’t you defrag a mailbox database? Well let’s consider what is involved in a defrag.

First the database is dismounted. Then the offline defrag occurs, which in effect writes a brand new database file of the data within the database, excluding the white space. Then the database is remounted again and, ideally, a backup is taken immediately.

So you can already see three pretty good reasons not to defrag databases.

• It requires an outage (at best this is an inconvenience for the business, at worst it may impact SLAs)
• There is the risk of corruption as the new database file is written
• It complicates your backup/recovery scenarios for periods before and after the defrag

Reasons to Defrag Mailbox Databases

But despite those reasons sometimes we have to be realistic about these things, and a defrag is necessary. Often in my case there are considerations such as:

• No additional storage available to create a new database to migrate the mailboxes to (or only available at significant cost)
• Migrations would take several days of minor outages for groups of users, instead of one single outage for all users on that database
• There are active alerts for low free space on the storage for that database that need to be cleared

So in some cases a defrag is the best (or only) course of action.

What about Exchange Server 2010 DAGs?

So why did I say in my previous article not to follow that procedure for mailbox databases on servers in a DAG?

The main reason is that it breaks the resilience of the DAG for that mailbox database. When you defrag a mailbox database you also then need to reseed it to all of the other mailbox servers that host a copy of that database. So for that period of time between the database being defragged, and the reseed completing, your database is not protected by the continuous replication of the DAG.

The second reason is that moving mailboxes within an Exchange 2010 environment can be performed almost as a no-outage scenario for the end user. In previous versions of Exchange Server if you moved mailboxes instead of defragging databases the end users still experience an outage either way. However in Exchange Server 2010 the client experience is much better thanks to online mailbox moves.

One commenter actually contacted Microsoft Support to see if there was a way to run the defrags on passive mailbox database copies. To my surprise Microsoft actually did have a process for this, but as you can see it is quite complex and in my opinion is more effort and risk than it is really worth.

What do you think?

What do you think about defragging mailbox databases? Is it something you do regularly? Or do you avoid it in favour of other methods of achieving the same outcome?

Leave a comment below with your thoughts.

Update – two good discussions going on about this in the Exchange Server Pros and MSExchange.org groups on LinkedIn.

Related posts:

• How to Defrag an Exchange 2010 Mailbox Database
• Generate SMTP Error Statistics using Log Parser and Exchange Server 2010 Protocol Logs
• Calculate Hourly Email Traffic using Message Tracking Logs and Log Parser
• Calculate Daily Email Traffic using Message Tracking Logs and Log Parser
• Reporting Exchange Server 2010 Message Tracking Event IDs with Log Parser

This article Should You Defrag Exchange Server Mailbox Databases? is © 2011 ExchangeServerPro.com

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Update: according to Microsoft, “All database copies can be backed up using an Exchange-aware, Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)-based backup application. However, the built-in support for Windows Server Backup is for active copies only. You can’t use Windows Server Backup to back up passive copies.” The rest of the article below has been left unedited, however be aware that the example demonstrated is of an unsupported scenario

The short answer is yes, however there are some important considerations to be aware of. From Microsoft TechNet:

Passive mailbox database copies are backed up using a separate VSS writer in the Microsoft Exchange Replication service. The Microsoft Exchange Replication service VSS Writer doesn’t support restores. Although you can back up a passive mailbox database copy using Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager or a third-party Exchange-aware VSS-based application, you can’t perform a VSS restore directly to a passive mailbox database copy. However, you can perform a VSS restore to an alternate location, suspend replication to the passive copy, and then copy the database and log files from the alternate location to the location of the passive database copy in the file system.

To demonstrate this, here you can see the mailbox databases MB-HO-* that are currently active on server HO-EX2010-MB2. They have no LastFullBackup timestamp because they have never been backed up.

[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase -status | ft name,mounted*,lastfull* -auto

Name     MountedOnServer                     Mounted LastFullBackup
----     ---------------                     ------- --------------
MB-HO-01 HO-EX2010-MB2.exchangeserverpro.net    True
MB-HO-02 HO-EX2010-MB2.exchangeserverpro.net    True
MB-HO-03 HO-EX2010-MB2.exchangeserverpro.net    True
MB-BR-01 BR-EX2010-MB.exchangeserverpro.net     True

On server HO-EX2010-MB1 I ran a mailbox server backup using Windows Server Backup.

After the backup completed the following can be seen. First, the LastFullBackup time stamp has not been written.

[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase -status | ft name,mounted*,lastfull* -auto

Name     MountedOnServer                     Mounted LastFullBackup
----     ---------------                     ------- --------------
MB-HO-02 HO-EX2010-MB2.exchangeserverpro.net    True
MB-HO-01 HO-EX2010-MB2.exchangeserverpro.net    True
MB-HO-03 HO-EX2010-MB2.exchangeserverpro.net    True

Next, the disk that the backups were written to contain VHD files matching the size of the data stored on the backed up volumes. For example, the F: (Data) drive holds about 2Gb of data, and the VHD for that volume is about the same size.

Because we can mount the VHD as a disk on the server we have the opportunity to inspect the contents inside of it.

We can see that even though it was not the active databases at the time of the backup, the EDB file for database MB-HO-01 (and others) was still backed up by the server.

[PS] C:\>Get-ChildItem H:\ -Recurse | where {$_.name -like "*.edb"} | select name

Name
----
HO-PF-01.edb
MB-HO-01.edb
MB-HO-02.edb
MB-HO-03.edb
PF-HO-01.edb

Next I’ll run another backup of HO-EX2010-MB1, but this time the mailbox database MB-HO-01 has been made active on HO-EX2010-MB1.

This time the LastFullBackup time stamp is written to the database.

[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase -status | ft name,mounted*,lastfull* -auto

Name     MountedOnServer                     Mounted LastFullBackup
----     ---------------                     ------- --------------
MB-HO-01 HO-EX2010-MB1.exchangeserverpro.net    True 11/6/2011 1:40:19 PM
MB-HO-02 HO-EX2010-MB2.exchangeserverpro.net    True
MB-HO-03 HO-EX2010-MB2.exchangeserverpro.net    True
MB-BR-01 BR-EX2010-MB.exchangeserverpro.net     True

So what do we learn from this?

Reminder, the below should be read in conjunction with the notice at the start of the article, as backing up passive database copies using Windows Server Backup is not a supported scenario

• Yes, passive database copies stored on a volume are backed up by Windows Server Backup
• Yes, this allows backups of passive database copies to be restored, although not directly
• Yes, this would allow a backup of a passive database copy to be used for disaster recovery of a database
• No, the backup time stamp is not written when a passive database copy is backed up, so any monitoring of backups that involves checking that time stamp needs to take that into consideration

Related posts:

• Exchange Recovery: Failed DAG Member in Exchange Server 2010
• Managing the Replication Source for Exchange Server 2010 Mailbox Database Reseed
• How to Set Up an Automated Exchange 2010 Database Backup Alert Email
• How to Install Updates on Exchange Server 2010 Database Availability Groups
• Review: Exchange Server 2010 Backup and Recovery Training

This article Exchange 2010: Are Passive Database Copies Included in Backups of DAG Members? is © 2011 ExchangeServerPro.com

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Related posts:

• TechEd Video: Upgrading to Exchange 2010: Notes from Field
• TechEd Video: Load Balancing with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
• TechEd Video: Exchange Server 2010 High Availability Deep Dive
• TechEd Video: Exchange Server 2010 High Availability Concepts
• Free Exchange Server Technical Education Videos

This article TechEd Video: Exchange 2010 Virtualization is © 2011 ExchangeServerPro.com

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Related posts:

• TechEd Video: Exchange 2010 Virtualization
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• The Exchange Server 2007 to 2010 Migration Guide is Available Now
• TechEd Video: Exchange Server 2010 High Availability Deep Dive

This article TechEd Video: Upgrading to Exchange 2010: Notes from Field is © 2011 ExchangeServerPro.com

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Related posts:

• TechEd Video: Exchange 2010 Virtualization
• TechEd Video: Upgrading to Exchange 2010: Notes from Field
• Getting Started with Exchange Server 2010 Client Access Server Arrays
• Upgrading to Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2
• TechEd Video: Exchange Server 2010 High Availability Deep Dive

This article TechEd Video: Load Balancing with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 is © 2011 ExchangeServerPro.com

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